Sarah Jones and the Jacob-Jessey Church: The Relation of a Gentlewoman

Abstract

• Sarah Jones was a leading member of the semi-separatist Jacob-Jessey Church, in trouble with High Commission in 1632. She is here identified as Sarah Hayes, daughter of Thomas Hayes, an Alderman and Mayor of London (1614-15). She married Thomas Jones of Lambeth in 1606 and was the author of two hitherto unattributed works, The Relation of a Gentlewoman long under the persecution of the bishops (1642), and To Sion's Virgins (1644). Sarah's writing reflects both her authority in the church and her recognition of the male anxieties to which it gave rise. It reveals that more explicitly separatist positions were evolving in the church during the 1630s and shows the divisive consequences of controversies over infant baptism and the practice of immersion.